I notice this mostly on Discovery Inc. channels. At commercial breaks, a few frames of a commercial flash & then a loop of the same PSAs starts. It appears that either Dish or Discovery are blocking commercials from their network feed, and some times inserting a promo for some discovery channel program. Is Dish network black mailing advertisers? to pay again to have there commercials viewable on Dish? or Discovery likewise? Any body know what is going on?
Constant Public Service announcements.
- Thread starter Jetta
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My guess is it's one of two things (and neither as nefarious as "black mail")...
1) Discovery gets shows from a 3rd party. They pay that 3rd party. As part of that deal, Discovery is allowed to run their own commercials (hence the PSA for other Discovery channel program) at certain times, covering up the 3rd party's commercial.
2) Dish's agreement with Discovery allows Dish to cover up some commercials. While this is possible, it seems unlikely since, according to you, the covering spots are for Discovery shows. If Dish was doing the covering, I'd expect Dish commercials.
PSA's aren't Discovery promos, they're Public Service Announcements and I know exactly what the OP is alluding to. There is a repetitious loop of PSA's for Spark (Autism), Vaping, Welcome Immigrants, and others that pop up every break. I have long suspected that Discovery may be having a problem attracting advertisers hence the overeliance on PSA's as fillers.
I have noticed that if you hit recall and then recall again you will see the actually broadcast commercial. I think the video corruption at the beginning of the inserted commercial is caused by a local (on the hard drive of the hopper) insertion of the PSA and its not happening on a key frame of the video hence the corruption. I wish I knew where they were stored so I could delete them of the drive,
I've had the same experience as hbroadwell describes. If I hit the backspace key and/or the forward space buttons then I see the original commercial instead of the annoying PSAs! It seems the PSAs are being inserted into the transport stream locally on the Hopper hard drive just as hbroadwell also suspects. I, too, wish I could find them and delete them as they are very repetitive and low quality too.
I have this happening on multiple channels on Dish as I rarely watch the Discovery channel. History channel, FNC, CNN, Sundance, and IFC are also affected (infected!) by the PSAs.
If anyone figures out a way to avoid seeing them please let us know!
I have this happening on multiple channels on Dish as I rarely watch the Discovery channel. History channel, FNC, CNN, Sundance, and IFC are also affected (infected!) by the PSAs.
If anyone figures out a way to avoid seeing them please let us know!
I use a unified Logitech remote so I just hit the backspace button then the forward space button and the original commercial appears instead of the PSA. If I'm already delaying the live feed on the DVR then just hitting the forward space button does the trick.
But what I'm looking for is a way to avoid them without having to push any buttons! They show up in nearly every commercial break throughout the day! That means they must air north of 100 times daily!? Very annoying to see the same low production value PSAs so often.
Yeah wife was watching a bunch of Holmes on Holmes from 10+yrs ago on a Discovery channel and it's like they played the 4 same old PSA's every 2 minutes, I swear the total mount of air time PSA had was more than the TV show.
My Guess, and only a guess: Dish is using these repetitive garbage PSAs to exert pressure on the network providers. In other words, if you want our customers to be included in your advertising numbers (which equate to the amount you can charge the advertiser) then you must reduce the price we must pay you for our carriage. Perhaps the other thing they should consider is the resentment of Dish's customer base to this process... if that's what's happening.
Dish (any MVPD) isn't going to be allowed to cover up the programmer's commercials unless it's allowed in the contract. We all know if Dish thinks a provider is asking for too much money, they won't carry them.
Then the only reason I can see is that Dish cannot sell many of their advertising slots... = trouble!
